Science Glance
James D. Watson, the brilliant but controversial American biologist whose 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, the molecule of heredity, ushered in the age of genetics and provided the foundation for the biotechnology revolution of the late 20th century, has died at the age of 97.
His death was confirmed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he worked for many years. The New York Times reported that Watson died this week at a hospice on Long Island.
In his later years, Watson's reputation was tarnished by comments on genetics and race that led him to be ostracized by the scientific establishment.
Even as a younger man, he was known as much for his writing and for his enfant-terrible persona − including his willingness to use another scientist's data to advance his own career − as for his science.
His 1968 memoir, "The Double Helix," was a racy, take-no-prisoners account of how he and British physicist Francis Crick were first to determine the three-dimensional shape of DNA. The achievement won the duo a share of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine and eventually would lead to genetic engineering, gene therapy and other DNA-based medicine and technology.
Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 for the development of a new type of molecular architecture. The constructions they created – metal–organic frameworks – contain large cavities in which molecules can flow in and out. Researchers have used them to harvest water from desert air, extract pollutants from water, capture carbon dioxide and store hydrogen.
The Nobel physics prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and includes a prize sum totalling 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.2 million) that is shared among the winners if there are several, as is often the case.
NASA's James Webb Telescope recently got a front-row seat to some incredible stellar fireworks on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy.
The Trump administration can go ahead and purge more than 1,600 research grants issued by National Science Foundation (NSF) worth more than $1bn, after a judge declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a case brought by a coalition of organizations representing thousands of scientists.
A group of more than 85 scientists have issued a joint rebuttal to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report about climate change, finding it full of errors and misrepresenting climate science.
An ancient and “nearly naked” black hole that astronomers believe may have been created in the first fraction of a second after the big bang has been spotted by the James Webb space telescope.
